Friday, April 20, 2007

This is a forward from an actual email I got today. It's a literal email; it is a cut and paste. If you could, please, write in a few comments. I will have a short response next week ...

“The Secrets of CMMI for Small Companies”

As the CMMI gains popularity and acceptance across the globe, many smaller IT and Engineering organizations feel left out. Not only do they want to leverage the model for process improvement, but many of their customers are asking them to reach CMMI Maturity Level two or even level three!

There is a perception in the software industry that the Capability Maturity Model Integration is only for large scale software development in the defense, aerospace, and pharmaceutical verticals.

This just isn’t true!

The CMMI is appropriate for organizations off all sizes whether Agile or Waterfall, engineering or IT, embedded or workstation, internal or external. The key to success isn’t “what” is in the model, but “how” it is interpreted and used.

Join Jeff Dalton, President of Broadsword, SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, CMMI Instructor, author, and software engineer as he explodes the myths about CMMI (yes, it’s Agile), about process deployment (no, it doesn’t take extra time), and management sponsorship (yes, the have to change too).

Excerpted from the content of his book, “Agile CMMI,” Jeff will discuss practical real-world approaches to CMMI adoption and organizational change with ideas that you can use today to make your process initiative more successful.

3 comments:

Well, it's just typical sales blah-blah-blah. Sophisticated organisations will bin the email immediately. Smaller ones may buy the book, and it might even help them a bit. Any movement toward examination of processes and improvement is good, in my opinion. And giving organisations which haven't thought about process improvement and producing better products systematically a taste of what's out there may impel them to search out better solutions.

Example: a company I once worked for was "captured" by a salesperson for an ISO9001 "mill". They sold the company (before I got there) a bill of goods, saying that we could be ISO9001 certified with a minimum of difficulty. They produced a mostly boilerplate quality and procedures manual, a certificate, and handed both over on receipt of the cheque. This was not optimal, and I realised it after I got there. When I discovered that the certifying company had been cited by Trading Standards for fraud in providing ISO9001 certifications, I managed to get management to ditch them and look for better solutions to product quality improvement. So out of a disaster some good things ended up happening. It's not the best way to proceed, but it's better than if management had never thought about quality at all.

The writer, and Jeff Dalton to whom he refers, are absolutely correct!

If you're using this to market a meeting, then "Chris" (above) may be correct that it may read like a sales pitch, and what might work better would be some simple examples of what makes Jeff's presentation (and the assertions thereof) actually work.

A few such examples could be:

o "Did you know that there isn't a single 'process' in CMMI?"o "Do you know the difference between a 'process' and a 'process area' and why that's important?"o "Did you know that there are parts of CMMI that are only 'expected' and not 'required'? Do you know the difference and how to take advantage of these facts to enable CMMI in your agile or small organization?"o There are many myths about CMMI that continue to be propagated by the majority of consultants and appraisers.o Did you know that fully 90% (or more) of CMMI appraisers don't have the background to effectively or accurately appraise whether process improvement is happening at the organizations they're appraising?o Do you know how to find, interview for and select one of the few who do?

If you're trying to provoke action or (at the very least) thought in your message, then I'd include provocative questions in there.

If you're just looking for a response to the message, then the bullet-points above should serve the same purpose.